This weekend has seen the open beta for Rainbow Six: Siege open to fans of the shooter, with the beta originally due to close after the long weekend. However Ubisoft have decided to extend the period of access til the end of the month.

The big reason for the extension is down to some technical issues with the beta which saw some players unable to connect to games for a long time, so extra time has been allowed so that everyone with access who wanted to play could have enough time to play.

Speaking on Reddit the developer said: “We’ve been getting good feedback on the content of the beta, and matchmaking and server stability have already been improved. There are still a few issues to work out, of course, and we will continue to do that over the course of the beta. Given the current situation, we’ve made the decision to extend the Closed Beta by 3 days. It will run through Thursday, October 1st.”

More beta keys are being sent out as well, so there’s still a chance to get in on the action if you’re lucky. Those who pre-ordered the game should have received keys as part of that pre-order, so check your e-mail if you did and haven’t checked your messages yet.

One of the developer sessions on-stage on this last day of EGX was an interview/ Q and A session with Indie developer Mike Bithell, known for 2D puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone and more recently stealth game Volume.

Bithell was very talkative about the indie game scene, saying that checking out the new games and new small studios exhibiting there was one of the things he most looked forward to about attending gaming events such as EGX and others. He spoke about his history and how Indie Game: The Movie filled with what he considered the “first generation” of Indie Devs had inspired him and others to create their own games and therefore become the “second generation” to inspire the next wave of developers and so on.

On changes to the scene he said that now it was a lot easier for Indies to get noticed than it had been 3 years ago when Thomas Was Alone was released, partially due to the fact that Indies were now taken more seriously by the gaming community, and thanks to bigger publishers being willing to take chances on small, quirky games that might not have cost a lot to make but target and resonate with their niche audience well. He also mentioned that while he had to call in a favour to get Thomas onto Steam, nowadays Indies found it a lot easier to get into the big digital distribution market of Valve’s. He did note though that work was still required to have a hit on your hands, and that developers still needed to promote their game and get it into as many hands as possible to hopefully build their audience.

When asked on future projects Bithell said that while he and some of the team who had worked on Volume had a number of ideas he wasn’t yet going to reveal any to the public although he did note that after two years of developing Volume he was thinking about doing something smaller again before the new big project.

The developers of Prison Architect today were on stage at EGX 2015 to talk to us about the new things we could expect from the game as it moves towards its final full release.

Prison Architect has currently been in alpha/early access for the last 3 years, slowly being developed on a monthly basis with several new feature being added over that time. In fact it was revealed to the audience that there had been a large spreadsheet of features that they had wanted to add to the game before they would release version 1.0. The full release will be October 6^th 2015, but the biggest pieces of news announced were that there would be two new game modes added to Prison Architect upon release.

The first is your standard Story Mode campaign, extending the brief story-driven introduction you get to the game and will also serve as a tutorial for the game, although you don’t have to play it first and the sandbox which the game has been up until now will be available right from the off.

The second was covered in a lot more detail and is called Escape Mode. There exists already in the game the possibility of being jailed yourself if you do a poor enough job managing your prison and so this mode is an extension on that, with the aim being to escape naturally. Any player-made map on the Steam Workshop will be playable in this mode and you can steal things from different areas of the prison and causing trouble will earn you ‘Reputation Points’ which you can then spend on things like upgrading your character, recruiting other prisoners to follow you, upgrading your followers and so on. The aim is to over time build yourself up so that you can escape the prison you find yourself in. There’s also a Skip Punishment button for when you find yourself sentence to solitary. Nice.

Other things of note were that while versions are coming to mobile platforms there aren’t any concrete plans for console versions… yet. We also had a hint at some future updates when talking about making the guards more realistic in that they could vary in how they handle the job and whether they would accept bribes or other things.

It was a very interesting look into a game that has done Early Access right in my eyes. They even said during the presentation that without the community feedback Prison Architect would not have been as good a game as they would have wanted to make, and that if you do Early Access that you need to respect your community. And they have. We all too often hear about Early Access games being left unfinished but here at least is proof that it is possible to get it correct and release a game through it.

Today’s Homefront: The Revolution developer session was a bit of a surprise today here at geek towers. We all expected Homefront 2, as the Devs from Dambuster Studios also joked about at the start of the session.

What we got, was a more than pleasant surprise. We started seeing what we first thought was another open world dirge fest. What we saw, was a structured area game (including green, yellow and red zones where gameplay takes place as separate maps), that including stunning graphics and effects including weather effects, such as fog and rain that creates puddles that then dry out naturally as the tarmac warms up again and a real day/night cycle (an overly inflated one by the devs to show it off to better effect). To the near end of the presentation showing off the dynamic enemy spawn areas, meaning that no two people doing the same mission will see the same troubles.

It’s this dynamic enemy placement that Digmbot and I most found interesting. The idea that a snipe could be around any corner, or as you walk through a building, a full enemy patrol with an APC may be there to surprise you (or for you to surprise)

They ended the session with a bit of info about the map they were using at EGX this week, which also happened to be the Gamescom map aswell this year, and that they had been pulling player activity info the whole time. Including where people died in the map, how they died and which enemy killed them, including one sniper who accounted for the most players deaths (apart from self inflicted ones). The funniest statistic was how many players had set themselves on fire. Not been set on fire from an enemy as none in that zone had flamethrowers or similar, but had walked through flame (your clothes are flammable) and even those that had misused Molotov cocktails (including one guy who must have dropped one at his own feet at the very start of the zone, which they took great delight in laughing about, I hope that guy wasn’t watching)

This all culminated in a beautiful looking game that I went from not caring about to being determined to play it tomorrow when I’m back at EGX and may even get early next year when it’s out!

Great Job Dambuster Studios!

Homefront: The Revolution is slated for a Spring 2016 release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and STEAM

Day 1 of EGX 2015 kicked off yesterday and while sat this morning with my aches and pains (I’m getting too old for this, I’m sending Cyborg next year), I was sorting through what games I saw there that I wanted to write about first and there was a stand out winner in that regard

Tears of Avia is a turn based tactical RPG with a core focus on build crafting. We want to make a game where the party composition, skills, items and strategy that you design are just as fundamental to the game play as the battle itself. We are coupling this with a dynamic story system that delivers a unique experience each time you play.
It’s Kickstarter started a couple of days ago and, as of writing right now, has 26 days left on it. BUT, it has already been Greenlit on STEAM, so thats a great sign of the games popularity already.

Now, I love a good JRPG, I’m a long term Final Fantasy fan (7, 8, 9 and 10 especially), and Tears of Avia gives me a FF7 vibe off the bat, but it changes things up with a slick RPG combat system, a fresh take on skills and beautiful graphics and effects
The game looks stunning, even the prototype build the team from CooCooSqueaky, the system was slick and it was beautiful to watch other people play the game and get excited about what they were doing.

So, whats the game about? Well, lets head over to the kickstarter page and get the info:

 

Over 200 years ago a war was waged against the floating city of Avalon lead by the demonic overlord Vylenkine. A powerful mage stood up against his evil forces and cast a spell that would seal the portals to the demonic realms forever. Except… there was a problem. The city froze and crashed along with the love of his life, Avia. For hundreds of years he has been seeking a way to free Avia with little success. That is until you came…

 

The trailer is gorgeous and tells the story in suitable anime way and the character models and enemies look like they were dragged smoothly from some of the best animes to come out of Japan
In fact, if this story isn’t picked up by Manga, they are missing a trick

Tears of Avia is set for a Jun 2017 release so far, with kickstarter backers at certain levels getting beta access (£30 or more pledge) and lots of other perks

Back this one if you love a classic JRPG